Synopsis

Lynch uses a sophisticated and thought out code, writ large across the sounds and animations he uses, to communicate aspects of the Twin Peaks story to us. One piece of that code is a certain type of effect: in certain scenes, Lynch uses a jittery, staticky animation, replete with frame drops, skips, and jump cuts.

Hypothesis

When The Fireman or Brigg is utilizing electricity to accomplish something, the resulting animation is smooth.

When a Lodge creature as defined in the hypothesis here is using electricity, the animation is jittery or staticky. Here’s an example of that kind of animation:

This, combined with the scratchy electricity sound, shows that the Fireman has fine-grained control of electricity, where Lodge use of electricity is chaotic and loud.

In Episode 18, when Mike is creating the new Cooper-Tulpa, the shot where he says, “E-lec-tric-ity” is jittery

Smooth Animations

In Episode 1, when Cooper transports from the Fireman’s home, Cooper has the same animation as the time travel scenes in episode 17. However, the animation is very smooth, with no jutters

In Episode 14, Andy’s transportation to and from the Fireman’s home is instantaneous. When he leaves the Fireman, a quick sound, like a light being turned off, is heard

In Episode 17, when Mr. C is standing near the Jackrabbit’s palace portal, he’s instantaneously transported

What Does It All Mean?

One thing that’s important to note: any kind of animations or effects in films take a long time to create. There’s a lot of steps, from filming to post, that go into making effects what they are. With that in mind, it’s much harder to accidentally, miscue something with an effect, like it is with general film. It’s easy to reuse a set piece, or miss some odd behavior from an extra (just watch Legolas’ facial expressions in LOTR: The Twin Towers 🙂 than it is to accidentally put in an effect.

All this together, two pretty distinct patterns emerge:

whenever a Lodge creature is using electricity, the electricity is uncontrolled and chaotic. The scene is often jittery and staticky, and the loud, scratch electricity sound is playing in the background.

In contrast, whenever the Fireman is using electricity, everything is smooth and in control. Portal transfers are instantaneous, and the sounds, if they exist, are quick and subdued

Results

Lodge creatures have a much less fine grained control of electricity than the Fireman does.

Lodge creatures, when using electricity, are accompanied by a loud sound, or jittery animation, and frequently both.

The Fireman, on the other hand, has only smooth animations when dealing with electricity, and rarely has any kind of noise at all.